suburban firecraft

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Backyard Ribs: Part One, The Rub

It’s the first Saturday in May and I woke up to a clear blue sky and a weather forecast that was begging for a day outdoors.

It’s always a gamble, of course, to plan twelve hours ahead of your cooking time for a backyard grill, particularly something as elaborate as a fire smoking some pork ribs. The rain could appear over the horizon and soak the suburbs. The weather could turn cold on a dime still this early in the season. Or the wind could push through and make building a fire a hurculean feat.

I took the gamble, though.

I had my reasons for stopping by a new local grocery store last night and a big one point five kilogram pack of ribs caught my eye. “I’m making ribs on the fire tomorrow.” I told my wife as stocked up the fridge with my purchases upon returning home.

“Oooh. Yum!” She replied.

“I’m also making it up as I go along.” I told her.

That got a less enthusiastic response.

I’ve never grilled ribs over an open fire, so tonight is going to be an adventure. It’s a new-to-me process, but makes use of lots of practiced skills that add up to what I hope will be a success. So, I’ll start with what I know, a basic dry rub and about eight hours in the fridge to let it season up a bit.

Dry Rub Recipe

60ml brown sugar
15ml salt
15ml ground black pepper
15ml paprika
30ml garlic powder
30ml onion powder
10ml ground celery seed
10ml ground mustard
10ml cumin

I spread this evenly on the washed and dried ribs. There was enough in this batch for about 2kg of meat, so I had a little bit left over when everything had been generously coated and wrapped.

Dry rubs have a couple of positive features I’m looking for in their use: Flavour. Tenderizing. Simplicty. And more, I’m sure.

I don’t have much room in the fridge for a big old marinade right now, either, and we’ve been trying to cut back on single-use plastic like large zip bags (he writes as he posts a photo of cling wrap on his countertop.)

But for more important results, back to things like flavour and texture. If you look at the recipe, for example, this particular rub has a solid tablespoon of salt. Eight hours resting in that much salt has an effect on the meat that is essentially a preliminary cure. It’s not going to make this into a true cure of the meat, but it will start to draw some of the moisture from the tissue and will have a tenderizing effect on the final texture.

My basic rub recipe also has a lot of sugar. Partly, it’s there to even out the spices. Literally. The sugar is a good way to bulk up the rub and make sure it spreads evenly across the meat and doesn’t concentrate too much of the spice unevenly as my untrained hands dash it across the raw flesh. Also, while I’ll add a sauce when I put these over the fire, that sugar in the rub will be the start of the carmelization during the first exposure to heat that will crank up the sticky sweet flavour many people associate with ribs.

The cooking of these gorgeous hunks of meat will happen later today, and I’ll photograph and post the results in the upcoming part two.

For now, cross your fingers for that weather holding out!

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Suburban Fire Craft (Part Two)

Back in early March I introduced my readers to my simmering big plans to upgrade my backyard fire pit set up.

For years we’ve not made campfires in our backyard a priority, mostly because we could go camping any time we wanted and evenings in the city were otherwise filled with social visits and travel. Backyard campfires were an occasional indulgence.

For half a decade we have had a small fire bowl which for basic purposes allowed us to have a small marshmallow-roasting fire in the backyard if we wanted, and I kept a bit of wood in the shed for a those handful of evenings a year when we kindled a flicker-filled gathering out our back door.

But the prospect of another summer of limited camping and sidelined travel plans… blah, blah, blah. You know the story. You’re all living it, too.

Since that post, I’ve made some purchases and done some setup work. Last night it all came together for an innagural (if small and simple) backyard cookout involving some sausages, marshmallows, and a beautiful evening watching the sunset beside some glowing coals.

First, I bought the family a new movable fire pit. It’s a much more elaborate setup than our old bowl, though. It’s a side-vented deep body steel fire pit, with a removable tray for charcoal burning, and two cast iron grill plate attachements. I can either cook on the grills directly, or it’s strong enough to hold a pan or a small dutch oven atop.

Second, I bought some cooking fuel in the form of both charcoal and smoking pellets. The tray insert allows us to have simple grilling fires which (unlike the gas grill we often use for backyard “barbecues”) is a more authentic cooking-over-fire option we now have.

Third, I stocked up on wood. Not only did my coworker chop down a bank of aging trees in her backyard and provide me with a few good chopping stumps and a truck full of logs, but I ordered a cubic meter of firewood from a local supplier, dried and ready for a summer of backyard fires.

Summer isn’t quite here, but I’m officially ready to tackle it with flame and iron… right in my own backyard.

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Suburban Fire Craft (Part One)

I have been making big plans for how I’m going to spend another summer of limited travel and quasi-lockdown in my little suburban backyard.

See, for at least five years we’ve had a small fire bowl set up in our yard. It has served the purpose of gathering friends and family around some burning logs, roasting some marshmallows on warm summer evenings, and sipping cold beers under the autumn twinkle of a clear night and the glow of a warm backyard fire.

We even kindled it up this last New Years Eve, sipped hot chocolate in the winter chill and ceremonially burned our 2020 calendar. Good riddance!

But after five years, and yet another long cold winter in the harsh Canadian elements, our trusty portable firepit is probably due for a replacement.

I’m looking at this an an opportunity rather than a loss.

The current bowl is simple and meant to be nothing more than a safe way to have a small fire. We’ve cooked hot dogs or made s’mores with it, but anything more substantial would be pushing it’s functional limits. It’s just not meant to cook over, for example.

As a kind of “Saturday Projects” series, and as summer approaches, I’ve got a few big ideas about how I’m going to bring some of my wilderness adventure to my suburban backyard. First on the to-do list is a series I’m calling “suburban firecraft” where I’ll be upgrading my fire bowl situation with a new set-up that will allow us to build safe, useful, and (of course) legal bylaw-compliant fires right out our back door.

I’ll be figuring out a way to not only cook marshmallows, but make use of some of our cast iron to cook campfire meals and test out some recipes before we take them out to the wilderness.

How would you build a backyard fire pit: a portable fire bowl that can be moved and stored or a permanent fire pit?

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